Despite the inclusion of a slim glossary and a scantily annotated character list, I cannot imagine anyone unfamiliar with the previous novels making sense of ''The Ringworld Throne.'' This is a shame, because some of Mr. Niven, whose characters spend virtually all their time solving puzzles posed by their surroundings, has apparently given up on trying to provide a coherent synopsis to new readers. Readers who remember Ringworld from earlier encounters will no doubt relish the latest installment of the saga. Niven worked out the architecture and engineering of this stupendous creation - which is a million miles wide and 600 million miles around - and enmeshed its enormously varied inhabitants in round after round of interlocking conflicts. In previous novels like ''Ringworld'' and ''The Ringworld Engineers,'' Mr. The centerpiece of this universe is the Ringworld, a vast hooplike artifact whose inside surface is home to some 30 trillion sentient beings.

Niven has been setting stories in what he calls Known Space, a far-future universe with a distinctive and complicated history. But while each book in the typical series starring a popular detective can be read on its own, many science fiction series are actually multivolume narratives whose later volumes are all but unintelligible if read out of order.Ī case in point is THE RINGWORLD THRONE (Del Rey/Ballantine, $23), by Larry Niven. Science fiction novels, like detective novels, tend to beget sequels, which, if successful, beget long-running series.

Ringworld throne